Instead of sending Christmas cards to all of your nearest and dearest this year, why not plant a tree instead?
The average person in the UK sends out about 24 Christmas cards a year and once you add that all up that’s a lot of cards*. It’s estimated that one tree produces just 3,000 cards, so imagine how many trees we need to feed our Christmas card tradition every year!
Plant Trees Instead of Sending Christmas Cards
Don’t worry, we are not suggesting we abandon the idea of sending cards altogether. But we can definitely consider a way to send our best wishes another way.
Here at Ethical Brand Directory we’ve been challenging ourselves to think about what we can do to minimise our impact this Christmas, but still show heaps of love. We asked ourselves is there a way to bring this beautiful tradition into the 21st century in a more environmentally friendly way? We believe there is.
This year instead of posting out cards why not create beautiful virtual ones and email them out to your loved ones? This way you can still keep the personal touch, whilst protecting the environment at the same time.
DIY Digital Christmas Cards
You don’t need to be a photoshop expert to make your virtual cards. In fact, you don’t need to know anything about photoshop at all.
You can use tools such as Snappa (which we use and LOVE) or Canva (they even have Christmas card templates!) to create amazing personal designs to send out to your family and friends.
Here’s one we made as an example perfect for sending via email or WhatsApp:
How to create an e-card in seconds
- We logged into Snappa
- Created a new image and selected a 1920px × 1080px Canvas
- Added a background image, ‘we searched for Christmas’ and selected a simple image
- Then we layered an effect over the top – we chose black and added it at 73% transparency
- Then we selected some text to layer over the top
- We then downloaded for the web!
Note: Snappa* allows you 3 downloads a month for FREE. If you set up an account you can upload and save your own images too.
Once you have emailed your cards out why not redirect the money you save on all those cards and stamps and put it towards a truly good deed and plant a tree for each person. An organisation that can help with this is the charity One Tree Planted, which we at Ethical Brand Directory have proudly worked with. We currently plant 5-trees for every new member that joins our directory.
One Tree Planted
One Tree Planted are a non-profit environmental charity who plant trees in countries all over the world, with the simple mission of helping the environment. For just one dollar (or 75p for us Brits) they can plant one tree. We think that there is a lot more value for money here than Christmas cards, no matter how good the bulk buy offer is.
We hope you enjoyed our little sustainable Christmas hack. We would love to see your virtual Christmas card creations so feel free to tag us in your pictures!
Don’t forget to check our Christmas 2020 Conscious Countdown Calendar daily for more gift inspiration and family-friendly activities this year.
*affiliate links used